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By the time her due date arrived, our families were ready to celebrate. We’d invested our hearts, our hopes, our exhausted prayers into thisexact moment.
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Then came the delivery.
Doctors rushed around the room. Machines beeped steadily, then urgently. Corinne cried out in pain.
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Before I fully understood what was happening, she was taken further into the delivery suite, and I was left pacing the hallway, praying for any good news at all.
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When I was finally allowed back into the room, Corinne lay exhausted beneath the bright overhead lights. In her arms sat two tiny bundles.
Tears streamed down her face.
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“Don’t look at them,” she whispered.
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“Corinne,” I said, my heart pounding, “what’s wrong? Are they okay?”
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“They’re healthy,” she said quickly. “Both of them. I just — I need you to sit down first.”
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I sat down slowly on the edge of the hospital bed, working through every possible thing that could make my exhausted, relieved wife look this terrified in a moment that should have been the happiest of ourentire lives.
